“Molly—” His voice was split ragged between longing and shame. The sound broke the spell. The feel of his mouth was still on hers; she knew enough to know that she would not easily forget it.
A few houses away Sam struggled for breath beside the baby he had cared for and protected as his own. From the house behind them several voices were raised in an eager shout, a few practised flourishes on the piano bespoke new entertainment.
“Christ, Molly—” This time the pain in his voice twisted like a knife in raw flesh, shocked her awake. She lifted a hand, laid it lightly to his mouth. Words not spoken were easier to live with. The feel of his lips on her fingers was like physical pain.
“Don’t say anything. Please don’t.” Would he understand? Would he?
His arms were still around her. He bowed his head; she saw his powerful shoulders hunch. She stood on tiptoe, wrapped light arms about his neck, barely touching him. Her kiss this time was long and soft, an admission, a pleading, a million words and not one of them uttered. Then she stepped back. The brilliant ice-blue stars behind his head blurred and ran.
“I’m not Harry,” he said, desolate.
“I know.”
“And Sam—”
“—is your friend. I know that too.” She lifted helpless hands, let them fall, turned and fled from him, leaving Jack Benton alone in the empty frost-lit yard, suddenly, shockingly sober and with a hole blasted in his painstakingly engineered defences that would take more than he possessed to make good. In a few unguarded moments he had squandered the iron control of a year.
He swore in a shaking voice and thumped his hand bloodily into the brick wall.
A stupid thing to do but, for him at any rate, better than tears.
Chapter Nineteen
He hardly spoke to her, barely it seemed even looked at her, would not be alone with her. In the weeks that followed Charley’s wedding Molly saw less of Jack than she had before. When she did see him he was the same as he always had been; coolly friendly and impeccably polite. She might have preferred it if he had been otherwise. Jack, she told herself bitterly, was never impolite to anyone. He would treat a stranger so. She tried not to think of him, tried even harder to tell herself that she didn’t care what he thought of her. Yet she could not forget those short minutes from the time he had swung towards her, eager and alive as ever Harry had been, to the time she had left him in the clean, cold darkness of the starlit yard. Those moments seemed imprinted on her mind as firmly as the feeling of his warm strength was imprinted upon her body. She knew what it would be like to have him love her. The thought hardly seemed to leave her. It made her days wretched, her nights unbearably restless. She looked at his closed, austere face and felt certain that she knew what he was thinking; of her, and of himself also. For she had no doubt, knowing him as she did, that his judgement of them both would be as harsh. He would see betrayal and treachery where she saw none; for him there would be guilt, the humiliation of shame, where for her these things had no place at all in something as simple and natural as their coming together in that moment had been. He it was who was spoiling it, making of it something to be ashamed of. She held imaginary conversations with him, reasoned, argued, all but pleaded – and grew even more frustrated that her defence of herself and of him never actually reached his ears. As the weeks passed she told herself it didn’t matter, that she didn’t care – and still when she saw him the set of his head, the width of his shoulders, brought a treacherous churning to her blood.
In the first days she had hoped, against hope, that he might come, just once, to see her – to talk, to give her all the reasons that she already knew why they must forget what they had both learned of each other. But eventually, listening to common sense, she gave up hoping for his knock on the door, his voice in the hall.
When it finally came she was completely unprepared for it.
She opened the door to him in the mid-afternoon darkness of a dreary December day. The sight of him took her breath with surprise. Behind her she heard – and ignored – Ellen’s door clicking softly open.
He stood self-consciously, strong colour staining his high cheekbones, his hands bunched into awkward fists about his rolled-up cap. He was in working clothes, his jacket was shabby and his boots marked and dirty.
“I need to speak to you,” he said with no preamble.
Molly stepped back, opened the door wider. He followed her into the sitting room, dwarfing the doorway with his bulk, and she was aware in the darkness of the hall, of Ellen s eyes on them both. She shut the door with a sharp, unnecessarily decisive movement. Her heart was pounding.
“I’m sorry to bother you like this,” he said, his voice gruff.
She shook her head. She had to tilt her head right back to look at him; his eyes were tired, dust streaked one side of his face. Yet the strong and healthy glow of him, even beneath the grime and weariness of the docks, lit the dim, unloving room like a lamp.
“It’s our Nancy,” he said without moving towards her.
She blinked. Nancy?
Jack ran his huge hand through already untidy hair. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have come. But I couldn’t think of anyone else the lass might listen to. I can’t tell Mam, Christ knows. Charley and Annie are that wrapped up in each other they don’t see anything that’s not under their noses. And anyway, she’d not heed them any more than she does me—”
“Nancy?” Her voice was leaden. “What’s wrong with Nancy?”
“You haven’t noticed anything?”
“I’ve barely seen her.” The table was between them now, the world had shifted back into perspective. Jack was a tired, obviously worried young man. And Nancy, the closest thing that Molly had had to a sister, was in some sort of trouble. “She’s been going out a lot. I thought it was an improvement. I mean, she seems to have made some friends—”
Jack’s sudden movement as his hand hit the table had in it a raw violence that brought her heart to her throat. “Friends? Jake Aster and his cronies? As soon make friends with a pack of rats.” He forced his voice to calm. “He’s vicious, Molly. He’s a killer and a thief and God only knows what else. What does his kind want with my sister?”
Molly remembered a fierce, heartless face, a crooked mouth. “He’s the man she met at Charley’s wedding?”
“Aye, he is. And it’s his good luck that I didn’t see them together earlier.” He wrapped his arms around himself, as if to contain his own violence. “It’s sure as hell that Charley didn’t know he was there. A mate of some of Annie’s kin it seems. Jake Aster dancing at Charley’s wedding; Judas, there’s a joke. I tried to tell Nancy then, I’ve tried since. She won’t listen. That’s why I’ve come to you. I’d not have, Moll, believe me, if I’d not thought it important—” For the first time his eyes acknowledged that there was something more between them than Nancy’s problems, “—but there’s a chance she’ll listen to you. Make her, Molly. Make her listen. Make her understand. He’s out to hurt her, nowt more. He doesn’t give a tinker’s cuss for her. He’ll destroy her—”
“Why should he want to do that?”
He turned from her and walked to the window, stood staring out into the clouded light.
“Jack? How do you know so much about this Jake Aster? How can you be so sure he means Nancy harm?”
The silence lengthened. Molly gnawed her lip; she sensed more here than simple brotherly concern for a girl fallen into bad company.
“You know him?”
Jack nodded.
“How well?”
“Well enough.” It was like pulling a tooth.
“From the docks?”
“Aye.” Something in his low voice brought the hairs on the nape of her neck to separate life.
She watched the still back. “You can’t stop Nancy from going round with someone just because you don’t like him, Jack. I can’t say that I liked the look of him much myself. But, well, it’s Nancy’s business, isn’t it? It’s her life. I don’t se
e how we can interfere. And if he cares for her—”
“Cares for her?” Voice and movement were slow as he turned from the window; Molly flinched from the expression on his face. “Jake care? He doesn’t know how. Did you not hear what I said? He’s a killer. A cold-blooded killer.”
She stared at him. “I thought you meant—”
“I meant just what I said. He has killed with his bare hands. He has his dirty fingers in every rotten racket in the docks. He’s a pimp, an extortionist, a thief who’d steal the blood from his own brother’s veins. A gutter rat. And he has his filthy hands on my sister. I just don’t know what’s happened to Nancy, Moll. She’s changed. It’s like talking to a stranger. She won’t listen to me.” The violence of frustration threaded the words.
“You and this man—” began Molly, questioningly.
“—hate each other’s guts.” The language and the tone were so unlike the Jack she knew that she stared. “Jake Aster’s got the wharves tied up like a Christmas parcel – he decides who’ll work and who won’t. And anyone who doesn’t like the way he runs things’ll likely wake up in a dark alley with their kneecaps smashed, or under a fallen crate with a broken back. But not us. We’ve kept him off the ships. You need skilled men in those holds; skilled men with a lot of muscle. There’s no place for the likes of Aster.”
“You fought him?”
“We did.”
“I once heard you preach against violence to Charley. I thought you meant it.”
“Aye, I did. I do. Violence as a means to an end I’ll have no part of, it’s no answer to anything. But when it comes to vermin like Aster, that’s a different thing, lass. That’s self-defence. Survival. What do you think it’s like inside those dock gates? A Sunday school outing to Southend?”
“Of course not. But—”
“But nothing. With a bastard like Jake Aster you thump him before he thumps you, and that’s that. Now he has a grudge, against me and against Charley, but mostly against me because I organized the men against him and the scum he leads. Grudges come hard with Jake. They stick.”
“And you think that’s why he’s taken up with Nancy? To get back at you?”
“Nothing’s more certain. I’ve seen him and his women; he likes them fast and flashy and loud as they come. Where does Nancy fit in there? Yet she doesn’t seem to care. I’ve tried to tell her, tried to explain. I don’t understand it, by God I don’t. What’s wrong with her, Moll?”
“Joey Taylor,” Molly said, wondering at the shortsightedness of men. “That’s what’s wrong with her. The things he said. She’s brooded on them, until she believes them.” She perched on the arm of a chair, fiddled absently with the fringed antimacassar.
“What did he say?”
“It wouldn’t help you to know.”
“There’s another neck I’d like to break.”
Molly tipped her head back and looked up at him, half smiling. “For a peaceful man you’re surely after wreaking havoc today.”
He did not smile back. “It’s our Nancy,” he said simply.
“I know. And I’ll help if I can, I promise. If you think she might listen to me then I’ll try. Though I don’t know how much good it’ll do.”
“Not a word to Mam.”
“Of course not.” Molly stood up.
“Thanks.” They stood looking at each other. Jack made an awkward gesture with the hand that still held his cap. “I’d best be off then.”
“Yes.”
He stepped closer; for a second her breath checked in her throat, but he did not touch her. “You have to make her see, Molly. I know the man. He’s a bastard.”
“He’s also very attractive. Have you thought of that?”
He didn’t like that. “You think so?”
“I know so. Any woman would.”
He shook his head in perplexity. “You’ve got me beat. All of you.”
“You don’t do so badly yourself.”
He had half-turned towards the door before the significance of that caught him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She watched him. His face was suddenly brick-red.
“If you’re talking about – what happened – at the wedding—” she let him struggle, made no attempt to help, “I thought – that is, it seemed best not to mention it.”
“‘Least said, soonest mended’?” Molly’s voice was dry.
“I don’t know what came over me to act so. It wasn’t the drink, at least—”
“You don’t think it was,” she finished for him.
He was looking at her with something close to anger in his eyes. “You make it sound cheap.”
“No,” she said shortly, “’tis you who are doing that.” For God’s sake, asked a voice in her head, what are you doing? Who needs to fight with him?
“I’m sorry if that’s how it seems. I’m no great man with words.” He spoke stiffly, stepped to the door. “But I’ve apologized. I don’t see what more I can do. It’s best we both forget it.”
“If you say so.”
The air between them rattled with unspoken words.
“I’ll be off, then.”
She nodded.
At the front door he put his cap on, lifted a hand and left with no goodbye. When she shut the door and turned it was to see Ellen standing in the shadows at the end of the hall, malevolence drawing her face sharp as a knife edge.
Molly went back into her room and slammed the door, hard.
* * *
Nancy turned her head, looked into the fire. “I know what he is. What they say he is.” The bruise on her cheekbone throbbed in the warmth of the flames.
Molly lifted expressive hands. “Then in the name of God what are you doing, Nancy? He’s not your kind and you aren’t his. You know it. Why do you go with him?”
The neat head moved impatiently. “My kind? His? Don’t talk rubbish, Molly. How would you know? Ask Joe Taylor who my kind might be.”
“Oh, Nancy!”
They fell silent. In the grate the fire crackled and spat; a coal rolled onto the hearth. Molly scooped it up with a shovel and a poker and settled it back on the glowing heap.
“I know you’re trying to help. I know what Jack must have told you. But you have to understand – there’s nothing you can do, nothing you can say that will change me. Jake’s cruel. I know it.” She was rubbing her hands on her upper arms, a little ceaseless, nervous movement of which she seemed hardly aware. “Worse than cruel. He’s arrogant and brutal. He terrifies me. But I can’t stop. Don’t ask me why. I can’t. Maybe Joey Taylor was right about me after all—”
“No!”
“How do you know? How do any of us know what we really are?”
Molly watched her worriedly; there was something terribly disturbing in the thin, bruised face, something that was not Nancy Benton at all. “I think you’re mistaken, Nancy,” she said softly.
“I don’t care.” Nancy lifted dark, intense eyes. “I don’t care, do you hear? And it isn’t your business. Nor Jack’s. I’ll find my own road.”
“And you don’t mind how much you get hurt following it?” asked Molly, knowing the answer, “or how much you hurt those who love you?”
“No, I don’t.”
In the hearth the cave of coals finally collapsed and sent a blast of spinning, glowing sparks streaming up the dark chimney.
* * *
Christmas was in the air. Sam came home one evening, coughing. The advancing winter was unkind to him; there were dark rings under his eyes, hollows beneath the bones of his face.
“Are you tired?” Molly strove to keep the impatience from her voice. Tired again?
“A little.”
“Would it be best for you to go to bed? Early, I mean?”
“Well—” he looked at the vibrant life of her, felt his own small strength ebb.
“Why don’t you? You’d feel better for a good night’s sleep.”
“What will you do?”
“I thought I
’d pop over to the Bentons’. I promised Sarah a pattern. I have it here, and she’s waiting for it. Danny’s fast asleep. Would you mind?”
It had been a week since she’d seen Nancy. Or Jack.
“I don’t like you going out alone at night.” He tilted his head wearily to the back of the chair. “You know I don’t. Why can’t you leave it till tomorrow? It’s bitter out there.”
But she was already slipping into her coat, reaching for her hat. “Don’t be silly, dear. It’s hardly the middle of the night. I’ve been cooped up here all day, I could do with some air. The bus stops at the end of Linsey Grove. And Jack’ll see me to the stop at the other end. I shan’t be late.” She paused, ready and impatient to be gone. “If you’re sure you wouldn’t like to come with me?” He shook a tired head. She dropped a kiss on the fine, straight hair. “See you later. Get a good sleep.”
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